Crucibles
by DSieya
Summary: Sometime between nine o'clock and midnight the day before, James and Lily broke up. No one can quite figure out why. [lj, oneshot, response to a challenge]


_my first lily/james! this is in response to 100-percent-harry-potter-obsessed's challenge, found on her profile but also listed below:_

1. It MUST be Lily/James.  
2. Lily must be angry with James for some reason. No "I hate you" stuff.  
3. Lily and James must have recently **broken up.  
**4. Sirius, Remus, Peter, and some of Lily's friends are expected to be included. They may or may not help solve the fight.  
5. Sirius must be as random as ever.  
6. (Here's a tough one) Try... no swearing/cursing. Dun, dun, dun!  
7. The following words must be included in the story:  
-Giant Squid  
-Twitch (must be used frequently)  
-"And the grand total shall be..."  
-Bunny  
8. Professor Slughorn must show up every so often and offer everyone Crystalized Pineapple.  
9. Remus shall let go of his Bookworm-ish ways.  
10. Peter must actually say something.  
11. Can be set at anytime during Marauder's Hogwarts days. (No time travel!)  
12. Must be a one-shot.  
13. James must stand on a table top and belt out a Country song.  
14. Must take place at Hogwarts.  
15. Must end in the strangest possible way you can think of.

_enjoy!_

* * *

No one was quite sure how it all happened. 

They all just woke up one morning, and _bam_, James and Lily were exchanging nasty looks and cold shoulders.

It was Sirius who voiced what everyone was thinking. "What did you _do_, you gigantic prick?" he asked at breakfast, when Lily sat on the way other end of the Gryffindor table with her friends Amelia and Nancy.

There was no answer.

Embarrassingly enough, it was an object of highest interest, especially during History of Magic and Transfiguration classes, the latter of which happened to be exceptionally boring on this certain Spring day. It got so out of hand that Professor McGonagall, keenly aware of any noise or distracted glance within the confines of her classroom, remarked that if the class would like to discuss the romantic lives of James Potter and Lily Evans, they could do so to their greatest content during detention.

Sirius was the only one to get a detention that night, because he chose to ask Professor McGonagall if they would prefer that they discuss her love life instead. Everyone agreed later that they had never seen McGonagall twitch so prominently.

* * *

Remus, during study hall that day, had his Potions book open but that was the only attention he had given to so far. He watched James, studying fiercely, with an eyebrow perked. There was a strange sort of fury to which James took notes out of his Transfiguration book. 

Actually, there were two odd things going on here: James taking notes, and James taking notes for Transfiguration.

"Your quill is out of ink," Lupin remarked, as the last half of James' paragraph was just a series of scratches on parchment.

"Oh." James made to dip his quill again, but Peter had swiped it and it was now five feet away, so now that even James, who had the uncanny ability to stretch his arms unnaturally long in order to reach Quaffles dropping through the air, could not reach it.

"What's up?" the smaller boy asked, not quivering under James' hard stare.

"You will be, if you don't give me back my ink well."

"That doesn't even make sense."

"_You_ won't make sense, if you don't give -"

"James," Remus interrupted. "What happened between you and Lily between nine o'clock and midnight yesterday?"

"They broke up!" Sirius said, as he clambered onto the bench next to James, freshly back from attempting to flirt with Nancy Peters.

"Thanks, Sirius, I'm sure they didn't know," James said sourly. Sirius nodded and smiled, glad to be of help.

"Pineapple?" came a voice above their heads, and both Remus and Peter wheeled around to see Professor Slughorn holding two large packages of crystallized pineapple for the Marauders to see. Everyone reached for a piece or two, but as soon as James' fingers touched the packages Slughorn left, leaving him empty-handed. James stared as the Potions professor made his way over to Lily's group, where he gave the three of them a full package to share.

Remus, chewing thoughtfully on the yellow fruit, watched his friend's fingers twitch.

"But what _happened_?" Peter insisted, his mouth full of sugary pineapple.

"Nothing!" he snapped.

"Stop lying, mate, even Slughorn's noticing," Sirius put in, stealing some ice mice from the girl next to him. He put them in his mouth, and instantly started to emit strange squeaking noise.

"I'M NOT LYING," James roared, jumping to his feet and storming out of the Hall, which was quiet except for Sirius' chattering teeth. Potter shot a furious look at Lily as he passed, who snorted derisively and returned to her own work.

Remus exchanged a glance with Peter, who seemed just as dumbfounded as he felt. Sirius didn't seem to notice; he was grinning at the girl next to him, who just noticed that her ice mice were missing.

* * *

Peter was sitting with Sirius and Amelia, another Gryffindor Chaser, who were still windswept and slightly sweaty from their previous Quidditch practice. According to them, James had been in such a foul mood that he missed a shot, and subsequently kicked the goal in frustration. In fact, he kicked it so hard that the practice had to end and James had to be forced up to the hospital wing so Madame Promfrey could treat the sprain. 

"You know you could always treat _my_ sprain, Amelia." Sirius winked at her.

"You don't deserve my healing touch, Black," replied the girl airily, without missing a beat.

"Guys," Peter said annoyedly. Sirius and Amelia always flirted heavily, but it would be a thousand years before they liked each other. They had tried going out the year before but had broken it off the next morning. Flirting was just a way to try to one-up each other. It got incredibly irritating when one was trying to have a half-serious conversation.

"What?"

"This is getting out of hand."

"What is?" Sirius asked, as Amelia slapped his hand away.

"This whole thing with James and Lily! Amelia, has Lily even _talked_ to you about it? Because James, well, isn't -"

"- and he's turned into this moody epitome of teenage angst," Sirius interrupted, nodding importantly.

"Well," she shifted, and frowned. "She said something yesterday about it. Her words were..." There was a pause, as the Chaser attempted to remember her exact wording. "_Remember what I said about James maturing? And that's the reason I went out with him? Well, it turns out he's the biggest perv that I ever gave the time of day to._"

"Harsh. Is that all she said?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe she told Nancy, thinking you would tell us."

Amelia looked slightly hurt. "If she told Nancy, she would tell me."

At that moment, Nancy Peters walked in. Sirius leaped to his feet, shook his hair out of his eyes, and walked over to her. Nancy was an extremely pretty black girl, from her wildly curly hair to her elegant shoulders, which Sirius now had an arm rested around.

She was also one of the few girls in the school who had never gone out with Sirius, something that Sirius didn't forget.

"So, Nancy, what do you know about the apocalypse?"

"What apocalypse?"

"The one where Lily and James broke up and no one knows why but them."

"That's an apocalypse?"

"Speaking of apocalypses," Sirius's voice got strangely deeper and more manly, which Peter just knew was a sign that he had just thought of a line that, in his mind, was extremely witty. "What d'you say we get down to it, you know, now that the end of the world is coming..."

"Down to what?" Nancy raised her eyebrow, and her and Sirius stared at each other for a moment.

"Down to _it_, you know, down to—down to..." he trailed off, as she just looked at him blankly. "You're impossible! At least with Lily, James got a rise out of her, I get nothing! Nothing! You have no emotions!" he accused wildly, and returned to his poofy armchair where he proceeded to sulk. There was silence for a moment, and Nancy shrugged and squeezed into the same chair as Amelia.

Peter caught them grinning at each other fleetingly.

The moment of relative peace was interrupted when James and Lily clambered in through the portrait hole, arguing, their voices getting steadily louder as they tried to get heard. Pettigrew watched, raising his eyebrows, as James reached out his hand subconsciously to help Lily up and she took it, neither appearing to notice and both still fighting their heads off.

The way Amelia and Nancy looked at each other, they had caught it too. Sirius hadn't. He had found a discarded box of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans and was throwing them in the air, trying to catch them in his mouth. He had spent so much time with James, much moreso than himself or Remus, Wormtail supposed, that he just didn't notice when him and Lily were arguing anymore.

Never mind that they had been dating for four months. Before, of course, they broke up.

"Oh, don't give me that load of bullock, James, I'm as smart as I look, you know -"

"And you call _me_ vain," he countered, both of them making their way into the middle of the common room, unaware that they had an audience. "It's gotten to your head, now you can't think outside the box and possibly think, '_hm_, maybe James _is_ telling the truth' -"

"No, I chose to think you were a very good _liar_ instead, and still _are_, and that you have _one_ thing on your mind, you're no different from Sirius -"

"Hey!" Sirius said. James and Lily didn't pay attention, but Lily's friends both started to laugh.

"You don't see me insulting your friends!" James yelled.

"Because _my_ friends have nothing wrong with them!"

"Hear, hear!" Nancy agreed. Remus showed up from down the staircase, where he had said he was going upstairs to study, but his tousled hair and puffy eyes showed that he had been sleeping instead.

"What's going on?" he asked groggily.

"I want my shirt back by the way!" James shouted. It was this comment that piqued everyone's interest.

"Then _you_ give me back my -" The redhead finally stopped her tirade, then turned to look at Amelia, Peter, Sirius, Nancy, and Remus, all of whom were watching the pair of them intently, waiting for Evans to finish her sentence.

Lily went very red in the face, then turned heel and stormed upstairs. James watched her leave for a moment, then started for his staircase. Just before he took the first step, Lily stormed back down, and flung a shirt across the room. It landed on James head.

"There you go!" she screamed at him. "Take your stupid shirt, I don't want it!"

And she left. James once again watched her go, his mouth slightly open.

"You know," came Sirius' voice from the corner. "I have two words that can solve this."

* * *

"Firewhiskey is one word, Sirius," Remus said, sounding exasperated and annoyed, as the six of them made their way up from the kitchens. 

Sirius ignored this, and did a sort of happy pirouette, a bottle in his hand already opened and drunk out of.

In his experience, alcohol always made James feel better. He had given it to Prongs after particularly vicious tongue-lashings from Lily before, and if the drink itself wouldn't make him forget this whole break-up crap, the hangover later definitely would.

"Don't worry, Jamsie-boy," he said, taking another sip as he turned around to walk backwards and grin stupidly at everyone. "You'll find some other girl. Hey, you can date Amelia, and I'll date Nancy!" he offered, and winked at Nancy, who shook her head thoughtfully.

"The other way around, maybe?" she offered in an offhand voice. Sirius sighed, turned to face forward, and rounded a corner -

_BAM._

Already with a slight buzz (he was never able to hold his alcohol like he claimed to), he stumbled backwards and slopped half the bottle onto the stone he was now currently sprawled over. Padfoot cursed, hearing his fellows giggling behind him

Looking up, he realized that he had run into Professor Horace Slughorn. "Oh, _sh_-"

"Professor Slughorn!" said Remus hastily, kicking Sirius discreetly in the back ("Ow!") and moving to cover the large crate of Firewhiskey that Peter and Amelia were carrying.

"What are you doing here, hm?" he asked, winking and tapping his nose, looking pointedly at the bit of crate that Remus was unable to cover. His mustache twitched.

"Er."

"Don't worry!" He laughed his booming laugh. "I won't tell a soul. Pineapple?" For the second time in one day, he offered out a package of the fruit. Everyone made assenting noises, and took a few pieces.

Once again, just before James grabbed a piece, he put the lid back on and tucked the package under his beefy arm.

"I'll have a piece, Professor Slughorn," James said, sounding irritated. However, the Potions Master went temporarily deaf, tapped his nose again, and waddled off past them down the hall.

"I hate that man."

* * *

"You know, James," Remus said loudly, an hour and five shots of firewhiskey later. "You frown too much."

Everyone nodded. James started to glare at him, not in a very good mood even with the alcohol, but caught himself in the middle of it. He did this a few more times. It made him look twitchy.

The five of them laughed; James even cracked a smile.

"Y'know," Sirius said, clapping James on the back. "You and Lily, you wouldnt'a worked out an'way, mate. She hated you too much. Muscle memory."

"What?"

"Hm?" Sirius took another shot.

"I didn't even _do_ anything," James murmured. Amelia made a sympathetic noise, and came over and hugged him. Amelia got very loving when she was drunk.

"I know. Happens to the best of us," Sirius agreed. Amelia went over and hugged him also.

"You guys wanna know what happened," James said.

"Sure."

"I dunno," he started heavily, standing up so he could sit on a table and face them all. "We were—were playin' around by the lake, and she got wet, so, so I just offered her my shirt to wear until she got up to the castle."

There was a pause so long that everyone thought that that was the end of the story.

"Huh?" Sirius was confused.

"I'm not _done_! Anyhow, she went behind, I dunno some sort of tree or somethin' to change, and – well, I swear, I wasn't tryin' to take a peek or _anything_ -"

Nancy giggled shrilly, which would have been a scoff were she sober. Sirius sighed, and leaned forward, resting his head on her knee. Her usually elegant fingers were clumsy as she started to braid his hair.

"Okay," James conceded, in a voice the suggested they five had collectively put him to the third degree. "So I was. But it's not as if I took her bra!"

"_What_?" Sirius' head snapped off of Nancy's lap, half of the side of his head in corn rows. Apparently, anything having to do with female undergarments required his utmost attention.

"How many bottles of this stuff do we _have_?" Peter asked, examining an empty firewhiskey bottle and giving no sign he had heard a word of what James said. He was worse at holding his alcohol than Sirius, who bent over his chair to count the number of bottles in the crate.

"She said I took her bra after she took it off! But I didn't!" James contested, standing on the table and stomping his foot for emphasis. "She said to me, she said, 'James, what did you do with it?' and I, I said, I told her I didn't _touch_ it and I—well, I guess I made a joke, I said that maybe a bunny came along and though it was holding apples in it -"

Everyone started laughing.

"_See_?" He gesticulated. "Funny! But she told me I was lyin', that I had it and was keeping it for my own pervy needs, and I told her that she, that she was just, you know, flattering herself, and it just got into this big thing where she said that she should have known I wasn't mature, and, and..." he sighed, and hung his head. "And I dunno. Then she broke up with me. Called me a liar. I hate her."

"No, you don't," Amelia said, now hugging Remus.

"And the grand total shall be... seven!" Sirius said triumphantly. "Eight!" he corrected, looking at the bottle in his hand.

"I beg your pardon," James suddenly yelled. Everyone looked at him. He had a bottle in his hand, held up to his mouth, and was swaying. "But I never promised you a rose garden!"

The other five exchanged glances.

"Along with the sunshine, there's gotta be a little rain sometimes!" he continued. "When you take, you gotta give, so live and let live, OR LET GO!"

Everyone stared at him, realizing that he was actually singing.

"I could sing you a tune or promise you the moon," he crooned. "But if that's what it takes to hold you, I'd just as soon let you go..."

Sirius, apparently unhappy that James was in the center of attention, climbed with difficulty onto the table. Him and James put their arms on each other's shoulders, and started to sway to the tune.

"Girl, you're getting that look in your eye, and it's starting to worry me!" Sirius started to sing. Remus and Peter dissolved into giggles.

"But there's one thing I want you to know... you better look before you leap, still waters run deep, and there won't always be someone there to pull you out!"

"I ain't ready for no family ties." Sirius was getting louder to be heard over James. "Nobody's going to hurry me!"

"And you know what I'm talkin' about, so smile for a while and let's be jolly!"

"Just keep it friendly girl, 'cause I don't want to leave! Don't start clinging to me girl," Black leaped off the table, fell down, and staggered back up. "'Cause I can't breathe!"

"LOVE SHOULDN'T BE SO MELANCHOLY!" James bellowed.

"Baby, baby don't get hooked on me!" Sirius was singing straight to Nancy now, who appeared dumbfounded.

"Come along, and share the good times... _while we ca-an..._"

"_Baby, baby, don't get hooked on me!_"

"I BEG YOUR PARDON -"

"_'CAUSE I'LL JUST USE YOU AND SET YOU FREE_..."

"I NEVER PROMISED YOU A... _ROSE GARDEN_!"

"DON'T GET HOOKED ON ME!"

And it ended.

Peter stood up and clapped his pudgy little hands loudly, wiping tears from his face. Remus and Amelia were watching blankly as Sirius collapsed into a chair, starting to snore. James was standing there, still on the table, his hands still raised to the heavens.

Nancy was looking at the staircase leading up to the girls' dormitory, watching Lily Evans stare at her ex-boyfriend.

"Lily!" she said, happily, crossing the room and stumbling at the last moment, falling on the redhead, who barely managed to stay standing.

James turned around, slowly, feeling horrified. He cursed loudly as his heel slipped off the table and he went crashing to the floor.

The only one who was sober in the room was the only one who reacted. Laying her friend soundly on the floor, where she would be safe, Lily hurried over to James' side, who was cursing like a fish and rubbing his head.

"What are you _doing_?" she hissed, once she made sure he didn't break anything.

"Laying here."

"_Why_ were you singing?"

"Because I'm drunk," he said, bluntly, and she sighed, lifting his shoulders off the ground and putting a pillow under his head. "Lily..."

"What."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to call you all of those mean names," he said, his voice regretful. Lily didn't reply. "And—and I didn't take it, I swear, and you _know_ I'm telling the truth, because I'm drunk."

"How does that mean you're telling the truth?" The frost in her voice was thawing.

"Because I can't lie when I'm drunk. Ask him." He gestured vaguely in Sirius' direction. His best friend was sprawled all over a chair and was still snoring loudly.

"Yeah, yeah..." she muttered as he sat up, leaning heavily on her, wrapping his arms clumsily around her middle. She could smell the alcohol on his breathe and she wrinkled his nose. Reluctantly, Lily hugged him back.

They remained like that for a few moments.

"James."

No answer.

"James, you can get off me now."

She waited. No answer.

"James?" Turning her head, she saw that she had fallen asleep on her shoulder. "Oh, the prat," she muttered, and gently layed him down. She couldn't tell why, but she felt a sudden rush of affection for him, and kissed his forehead.

"_Awww_..." As she tried to stand up, Amelia rushed over to her and hugged her bodily. "I knew you two would make it!"

* * *

Meanwhile, deep under the lake, the Giant Squid was repeatedly rubbing a tentacle over a rough patch of rock, trying to get whatever was attached to it _off_. It had caught on to him as he drifted lazily toward the surface a few nights before, and – oh, for the life of him, the stupid little thing wouldn't move! 

_Couldn't the kids just keep track of their clothes when they swam in his lake?_, he thought, shaking his tentacle a little more vigorously.

…

By Ursula, he _hated_ when this happened!

* * *

_so, how'd i meet the guidelines? ;) by the way, james is singing 'rose garden' by lynn anderson and sirius sang 'baby don't get hooked on me' by mac davis. i own neither song. don't sue._


End file.
